[At-Large] FW: Withdraw the gun database

[Karl Auerbach]

On 01/19/2013 10:25 AM, John R. Levine wrote:

> Yes, it's a copy of a database the contents of which are public by law.

> What could this possibly have to do with anything related to ICANN?

Well, here is how it could:

  1. Guns are are intentionally designed to cause mayhem and death at a
distance.  Some guns are designed primarily to commit that mayhem on
animals.  But many guns are designed primarily to commit that mayhem on
humans.  Other uses are ancillary to that purpose.  But even guns used
for those other purposes retain their ability to cause great bodily harm
to people.  Guns are most definitely dangerous instrumentalities of
great bodily harm.

  2. Domain names, on the other hand, are far from lethal and one would
have to be very imaginative to construct a situation in which a domain
name could cause physical harm or death to a human.  So it is safe to
categorize domain names as instrumentalities highly unlikely to cause
bodily harm.

 3. It stands to reason that absent other considerations that privacy
protections should be less for information concerning the possession and
use of instrumentalities of great bodily harm than for things that are
not generally capable of that kind of damage.

 4. Therefore, absent other considerations, if guns ownership is
deserving of privacy protections then there is even more reason to
protect the privacy of domain name ownership.

	--karl--